Abstract
Few events in Scottish criminal justice history are as infamous as the sedition trials of the early 1790s. This chapter explores how the trials were represented in Scottish newspapers, and how the judicial system responded. Press reports, it is shown, were multi-variant and conditioned by a variety of political, social and cultural factors and by the threat of judicial censure. Some coverage provided a forum for political protest and condemnation, but most utilised rhetorical strategies to present the conduct of the Scottish High Court in a positive light and to defend Scots law in the face of English media criticism.
Research for this chapter was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council (DP130104804) and funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (CE110001011). David G. Barrie’s ORCID is 0000-0001-5186-8895; Joanne McEwan’s ORCID is 0000-0003-1214-8179. Thanks to Iain Hutchison for his research assistance in Edinburgh.
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Notes
- 1.
John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796 (Oxford, 2000).
- 2.
See, for instance, Gordon Pentland, “The Posthumous Lives of Thomas Muir”, in Liberty, Property and Popular Politics: England and Scotland, 1688–1815: Essays in Honour of H.T. Dickinson, eds Gordon Pentland and Michael T. Davis (Edinburgh, 2016), 207–23; H.T. Dickinson, “Thomas Muir and the ‘Scottish Martyrs’ of the 1790s”, Historian, 86 (2005), 23–31; Alex Tyrrell and Michael T. Davis, “Bearding the Tories: The Commemoration of the Scottish Political Martyrs of 1793–94”, in Contested Sites: Commemoration, Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain, eds Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell (Aldershot, 2004), 25–56.
- 3.
Michael T. Davis, “Prosecution and Radical Discourse during the 1790s: The Case of the Scottish Sedition Trials”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 33 (2005), 150.
- 4.
David Lemmings, “Introduction: Criminal Courts, Lawyers and the Public Sphere”, in Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, ed. David Lemmings (Farnham, 2012), 8.
- 5.
See, for example, Peter King, “Newspaper Reporting and Attitudes to Crime and Justice in Late-Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century London”, Continuity and Change, 22 (2007), 73–112; Simon Devereaux, “From Sessions to Newspaper? Criminal Trial Reporting, the Nature of Crime, and the London Press, 1770–1800”, The London Journal, 32 (2007), 1–27.
- 6.
Lindsay Farmer, “‘With all the Impressiveness and Substantial Value of Truth’: Notable Trials and Criminal Justice, 1750–1930”, Law and Humanities, 1 (2007), 58.
- 7.
Davis, “Prosecution and Radical Discourse During the 1790s”. For the representation of radicalism more broadly, see Kevin Gilmartin, Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1996).
- 8.
Bob Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism (c. 1789–1794)”, Scottish Historical Review, 84 (2005), 38–62; and Bob Harris, The Scottish People and the French Revolution (London, 2008), 45–74.
- 9.
On the role of emotions, see Amy Milka and David Lemmings, “Narratives of Feeling and Majesty: Mediated Emotions in the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Courtroom”, The Journal of Legal History, 38 (2017), 155–78.
- 10.
Anne-Marie Kilday, “Contemplating the Evil Within: Examining Attitudes to Criminality in Scotland, 1700–1840,” in Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1700–1850, ed. David Lemmings (Farnham, 2012), 158–59.
- 11.
There were a few other newspapers in Scotland at the time but these are the main ones consulted for this study.
- 12.
Kilday, “Contemplating the Evil Within”, 156.
- 13.
Lucyle Werkmeister, A Newspaper History of England 1792–1793 (Lincoln, 1967), 406.
- 14.
The LCS sent short-hand writer William Ramsay to Edinburgh to record the trials. See Mary Thale (ed.), Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society (Cambridge, 1983), 105.
- 15.
Davis, “Prosecution and Radical Discourse During the 1790s”, 153.
- 16.
Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism”, 38.
- 17.
Figures derived from M. E. Craig, The Scottish Periodical Press, 1750–1789 (Edinburgh, 1931).
- 18.
Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism”, 38.
- 19.
Ibid., 51.
- 20.
Ibid., 46–7.
- 21.
Harris, The Scottish People and the French Revolution, 45–74.
- 22.
Caledonian Mercury, 12 January 1793.
- 23.
See the opinion of James Ferguson, defence counsel. National Records of Scotland (NRS), JC3–46: High Court of Justiciary Book of Adjournal, 1792–93, f. 161.
- 24.
Lindsay Farmer, Criminal Law, Tradition and Legal Order: Crime and the Genius of Scots Law 1747 to the Present (Cambridge, 1997), 102.
- 25.
Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism”, 53.
- 26.
Caledonian Mercury, 12 January 1793.
- 27.
Atle L. Wold, Scotland and the French Revolutionary Wars, 1792–1802 (Edinburgh, 2015).
- 28.
This confusion was not lost on legal commentators. William Steele, for example, explained that “It is extremely difficult to define with precision in what sedition consists, because it is evident that the same language or publications which are calculated at one period to stir up immediate dissension, may be diffused at another without any danger”. William Steele, A Summary of the Powers and Duties of Juries in Criminal Trials in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1833), 186.
- 29.
Edinburgh Evening Courant, 10 January 1793.
- 30.
Lemmings, “Introduction: Criminal Courts, Lawyers and the Public Sphere”, 5.
- 31.
Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism”, 51.
- 32.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 15 January 1793.
- 33.
In 1765, the editors of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, Edinburgh Courant, Edinburgh Mercury and Scots Magazine were ordered to sit themselves at the bar in relation to a report on the trial of Katherine Nairn and Patrick Ogilvie. No further action was taken after they were admonished. In 1777, James Gilkie was ordered to appear after he published a letter in a newspaper addressed to the sheriffs of Berwick regarding the murder of Archibald Rule. It was alleged that his letter was intended to inflame the minds of the people against the accused. He was imprisoned for 1 month and ordered to find caution.
- 34.
Caledonian Mercury, 4 February 1793.
- 35.
Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism”, 52.
- 36.
NRS, JC3–46, f. 351.
- 37.
NRS, JC3–46, f. 352.
- 38.
For more on the speech, see Cockburn, Examination, I: 119.
- 39.
For example, “What mair equality wad they hae’ with political reform?”: Thomas Jones Howell (ed.), A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors, 33 vols (London, 1809–26), XIII: 43.
- 40.
NRS, JC3–46, ff. 392–93.
- 41.
Johnston wrote: “I have always venerated the laws. I know their necessity and their utility. No man holds a court of justice in higher respect or more revers than I do, that dignity with which your Lordships as guardians of those laws are invested by the constitution.” NRS, JC3–46, f. 394.
- 42.
Caledonian Mercury, 25 February 1793.
- 43.
NRS, JC3–46, f. 395.
- 44.
NRS, JC3–46, f. 396.
- 45.
NRS, JC3–46, f. 398.
- 46.
Studies of the Old Bailey in London have suggested that law students often supplemented their income from by carrying out such work. See Judith Rowbotham, Kim Stevenson and Samantha Pegg (eds), Crime News in Modern Britain (Basingstoke, 2013).
- 47.
NRS, JC3–46, f. 446.
- 48.
Caledonian Mercury, 25 February 1793. The Robertson and Berry trial was published on 18 and 21 February 1793.
- 49.
Johnston had, Drummond now claimed, approved of the publication. See also a similar report in Edinburgh Advertiser, 26 February 1793.
- 50.
Glasgow Courier, 26 February 1793.
- 51.
Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, XXIII: 52.
- 52.
On middle-class masculinity, see John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow, 2005).
- 53.
“This sentence of your lordships called the respondent’s most serious attention to the predicament in which he stood as proprietor of a newspaper, for every part of which he was responsible; with a view, therefore, not only to relieve himself from any such risk in future, but to prevent his being, even ignorantly or inadvertently, the means of conveying to the public any thing that might be offensive or dangerous to the community the respondent resolved to give up the concern, which he accordingly did at a very considerable loss to his family, as the continuation of the publication had been too short to allow him to get back the sums necessarily expended in the commencement of the work.” Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, XXIII: 71.
- 54.
Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death, 254.
- 55.
For its commentary on Fyshe Palmer, see Edinburgh Gazetteer, 8 October 1793.
- 56.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 8 January 1793.
- 57.
Quotes from the Rights of Man accounted for an entire column and a half of the trial report. Edinburgh Gazetteer, 3 September 1793.
- 58.
The Gazetteer had named the jurors in the sedition trial of Robertson and Berry a few months earlier, which is the only preceding example we have come across. The trial was published in two editions: Edinburgh Gazetteer, 19 February 1793 and 22 February 1793.
- 59.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 22 February 1793. Concerns about the selection of juries were especially prominent in Whig circles. See Jim Smyth and Alan McKinlay, “Whigs, Tories and Scottish Legal Reform, c. 1785–1832”, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History and Societies, 15 (2011), 115–118.
- 60.
The Gazetteer highlighted the court’s rejection of one of Muir’s objections by printing that it had been “unanimously repelled” in larger font.
- 61.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 3 September 1793.
- 62.
Peter King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 1740–1820 (Oxford, 2000), 255.
- 63.
David Lemmings, “Emotions, Power and Popular Opinion about the Administration of Justice: The English Experience, from Coke’s ‘Artificial Reason’ to the Sensibility of ‘True Crime Stories’”, Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 1.1 (2017), 59–90.
- 64.
King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 255.
- 65.
Caledonian Mercury, 31 August 1793.
- 66.
Glasgow Courier, 19 September 1793.
- 67.
The trial appeared in the Caledonian Mercury on 31 August 1793; the Edinburgh Advertiser on 30 August 1793 and 3 September 1793; the Glasgow Courier on 3 September 1793; and Edinburgh Evening Courant on 31 August 1793.
- 68.
Douglas Hay, “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law”, in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule and Cal Winslow. (Harmondsworth, 1975), 16–63.
- 69.
Edinburgh Mercury, 31 August 1793.
- 70.
Edinburgh Advertiser, 3 September 1793.
- 71.
Quote cited in Edinburgh Gazetteer, 8 October 1793.
- 72.
Edinburgh Advertiser, 3 September 1793.
- 73.
See, for instance, Edinburgh Gazetteer, 22 October 1793.
- 74.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 5 November 1793.
- 75.
On 1 October 1793, for example, the Edinburgh Gazetteer published a letter about Muir’s trial and conviction from the Oracle, “a ministerial paper”, signed off “Scotus”, which was addressed to the Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland. Another, signed off “An English Lawyer”, had originally appeared in the Morning Chronicle.
- 76.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 8 October 1793.
- 77.
Re-printed in the Edinburgh Gazetteer, 22 October 1793.
- 78.
See the letter originally published in the Morning Chronicle, and re-published in the Edinburgh Gazetteer, 1 October 1793, about Muir’s trial.
- 79.
See, for instance, advertisements for The Trial of Thomas Muir, esq, Younger of Huntershill at the High Court of Justiciary upon Friday and Saturday the 30 and 31st day of August 1793, to be published by A. Scott, printer of the Edinburgh Gazetteer and The Trial of Thomas Muir esq Younger of Huntershill before the High Court of Justiciary on the 30th and 31st August 1793, to be published by A. Robertson, published in the Edinburgh Gazetteer, 3 September 1793.
- 80.
Caledonian Mercury, 16 September 1793.
- 81.
Caledonian Mercury, 21 September 1793.
- 82.
Caledonian Mercury, 19 September 1793.
- 83.
See Scott’s advert for the Muir trial, published in the Edinburgh Gazetteer, 3 September 1793.
- 84.
Caledonian Mercury, 23, 26, 28, 30 September, and 3 and 5 October 1793.
- 85.
Harris, The Scottish People and the French Revolution, 121.
- 86.
Ibid.
- 87.
The Chronicle’s article was re-published in The Times, 1 January 1794.
- 88.
See, for instance, an anonymous letter that appeared in London’s Morning Chronicle, 7 October 1793, a letter to the editor from G. H. printed in the Morning Chronicle, 18 September 1793; and correspondence from “Scotus”.
- 89.
The address was published on 7 September in the following newspapers: Glasgow Courier, the Edinburgh Evening Courant, the Caledonian Mercury and the Edinburgh Advertiser.
- 90.
Much correspondence in the English press was clearly written by those with a firm understanding of Scots law or with an intimate understanding of legal practice in Edinburgh. See n. 88.
- 91.
Atle L. Wold, “Was there a law of Sedition in Scotland? Baron Hume’s Analysis of the Scottish Sedition Trials”, in Liberty, Property and Popular Politics: England and Scotland, 1688–1815: Essays in Honour of H.T. Dickinson, eds Gordon Pentland and Michael T. Davis (Edinburgh, 2016), 163.
- 92.
Ibid., 164.
- 93.
If the charges had fallen under the remit of a 1703 statute, the judges would not have been permitted to issue a sentence of transportation. The objections of Skirving and Margarot to this effect, however, were repelled by confirming that they were being charged with a common law crime. On this discrepancy, see David Hume, Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1797), II: 486–87.
- 94.
Glasgow Courier, 9 January 1794.
- 95.
Edinburgh Advertiser, 18 February 1794.
- 96.
For the Skirving trial, see for instance, the Edinburgh Advertiser, 7 January 1794; for Margarot, 17 January 1794; and for Gerrald, 4 March 1794.
- 97.
Edinburgh Evening Courant, 11 January 1794.
- 98.
Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, XXIII: 630–31.
- 99.
An Account of the Proceedings of the British Convention: Held in Edinburgh the 19th of November, 1793 (London, 1793), 28–29.
- 100.
An Account of the Proceedings of the British Convention, 39.
- 101.
Alexander Scott was charged with “wickedly and feloniously printing and circulating, or causing to be circulated, any writings or speeches of a seditious import and tendency, which were published through the medium of the Edinburgh Gazetteer.” See Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, XXIII: 384. The editions singled out were nos 78 (26 November 1793), 79 (3 December 1793) and 80 (10 December 1793).
- 102.
The Edinburgh Gazetteer ceased publication on 29 January 1794 (issue 87).
- 103.
See Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, XXIII: 66.
- 104.
Ibid., XXIII: 66–71.
- 105.
Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death, 186.
- 106.
Smyth and McKinlay, “Whigs, Tories and Scottish Legal Reform”, 112–119.
- 107.
Hume and Tories defended Scots law, saying it was better than English law in a number of ways: in relation to the nature of the criminal charge, legal representation, laws if evidence, prosecution, and the nature of discretionary justice afforded to courts allowed for humane punishment. Ibid., 123–24.
- 108.
Caledonian Mercury, 6 February 1794.
- 109.
Caledonian Mercury, 6 February 1794.
- 110.
See, for example, the view of David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield, and Lord Justice General of Scotland regarding the press coverage of the trials and Alexander Wedderburn and Lord Thurlow on how criticism of the courts was based on a misunderstanding of the Scottish system. The latter, for instance, informed the House of Lords that Scots law “afforded a greater degree of looseness” in framing the indictment than was permitted in England. Caledonian Mercury, 6 February 1794. Similarly, the Lord Advocate argued that “the conduct of the Judges was strictly legal, and they had exercised their discretionary power in the most laudable manner.” Criticism was “founded in a complete misapprehension of the laws of that [Scotland] country; and he must say, a total ignorance of the practice of the Courts of Justiciary.” Caledonian Mercury, 15 March 1794.
- 111.
Caledonian Mercury, 17 March 1794.
- 112.
An article in the Edinburgh Advertiser, 7 January 1794 noted that Muir and Fyshe Palmer were well treated on the hulks, having a cabin to themselves and being permitted visits from their friends. A report in the Caledonian Mercury described life in New South Wales as “delightful.” Caledonian Mercury, 17 March 1794.
- 113.
Caledonian Mercury, 6 February 1794.
- 114.
Lemmings, “Emotions, Power and Popular Opinion about the Administration of Justice,” 59–90.
- 115.
For more on official opposition, see Harris, “Scotland’s Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism”, 51.
- 116.
Smyth and McKinlay, “Whigs, Tories and Scottish Legal Reform”, 111–32; Cockburn, Examination, I.
- 117.
Edinburgh Gazetteer, 8 October 1793.
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David Lemmings, “Emotions, Power and Popular Opinion about the Administration of Justice: The English Experience, from Coke’s ‘Artificial Reason’ to the Sensibility of ‘True Crime Stories’”, Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 1.1 (2017), 59–90.
Amy Milka and David Lemmings, “Narratives of Feeling and Majesty: Mediated Emotions in the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Courtroom”, The Journal of Legal History, 38 (2017), 155–78.
Gordon Pentland, “The Posthumous Lives of Thomas Muir”, in Liberty, Property and Popular Politics: England and Scotland, 1688–1815: Essays in Honour of H.T. Dickinson, eds Gordon Pentland and Michael T. Davis (Edinburgh, 2016), 207–23.
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Barrie, D.G., McEwan, J. (2019). The Newspaper Press, Sedition and the High Court of Justiciary in Late Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh. In: Davis, M., Macleod, E., Pentland, G. (eds) Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions. Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98959-4_3
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